Since electronics and information-related technologies have been continuously improved, the data to be processed by computers and their memory devices have also increased. The processor speed has also increased beyond the imagination of human beings; therefore, people have to face having to work in an overheating computer system environment. Among all computer components, the primary heat sources are from CPUs, power supplies and hard drives.
Among the above mentioned heat sources, namely the CPU, the power supply and the hard drive, the hard drive is the most vulnerable to an overheated situation. If the hard drive becomes overheated, it will be damaged and the important data saved therein will be lost, resulting in unrecoverable damage to the computer. Therefore, how to keep the hard drive under an acceptable temperature range is very important to computer product designers and manufacturers.
Among computer overheating problems, heat dissipation for the CPU and the power supply has been improved with great efforts from the industry. For example, the CPU is applied with a metallic heat-absorbing piece with fans added to solve the overheating problem. On the other hand, due to the internal structural and space limitations, the power supply is designed with corresponding fans to improve air convection so as to assist heat dissipation. Among the three above-mentioned heat-generating mechanisms, the hard drive is the one with the least effective improvement on heat dissipation. This is because the hard drive is a high heat source and is limited by the structural space of the various hard drives.
Three kinds of hard drives are currently used in a computer. One is to fix the hard drive in the hard drive bay in the computer system; another is similarly disposed in the hard drive bay in the computer system but can be swapped with a hard drive case; the other is to externally connect the hard drive outside the computer system using a USB connector. Because the structural design is less than perfect, the heat dissipation function for each is not ideal.
Based on the drawbacks caused by the limited space provided in the various conventional hard drive devices and the heat dissipation problem, the inventor develops a computer hard drive heat dissipation device. Through a special heat dissipation design, the present invention can be used for a fixed, swappable, and externally connectable hard drive. The housing of the computer hard drive is metallic housing, and is disposed with a heat socket inside. The bottom of the metallic housing is provided with a heat board. A contact surface where the heat socket and the heat board contact the hard drive, corresponding to a computer heat source, is provided with a soft high heat conductive material or a high heat conductive medium capable of absorbing vibration, enhancing qualitative fit, and conducting heat. The contact surface of the hard drive and the surrounding space are provided with vibration absorption and sound absorption materials respectively so as to obtain great capabilities in heat dissipation, vibration absorption and sound absorption.